


(Not a Fic! - Meta) RCAU headcanons

by cac0daemonia



Series: Clone Wars: Reconstruction Corps AU [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Meta, Reconstruction Corps AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cac0daemonia/pseuds/cac0daemonia
Summary: My brain is always preoccupied with the Reconstruction Corps AU, so I wanted to lay down reasons behind some of my headcanons that may not be obvious. May add more chapters later.Tumblr
Series: Clone Wars: Reconstruction Corps AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048891
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	1. Vod

I _really_ adore the Mando’a word “vod” because it’s a gender neutral way to refer to siblings/close comrades. After much hemming and hawing, however, I decided not to make that and other Mando’a words a major part of the clones’ vocabulary in the Reconstruction Corps AU.

I love fics, art, and AUs where the clones embrace their Mandalorian heritage, but I wanted to explain why I chose to keep them more removed from it than a lot of the fandom does. I haven’t been able to find a ton of concrete information about what life was like for cadets on Kamino, and between canon and Legends, it’s a mess, anyway. However, while the inconsistencies of Star Wars canon and how it gets tangled up with Legends/EU material, drives me crazy sometimes, I also enjoy how it offers fan creators more opportunities to pick and choose what they like, and build their own stories and character interpretations from there.

Alright, my headcanons (please keep in mind this all just my take for the RCAU, and that there is EU/Legends info out there that contradicts me):

 _1\. I haven’t read any primary sources about the Cuy’val Dar, so I’ve built up this idea with what I’ve gleaned from Wookieepedia, snippets from comics, meta, and other fics. But regardless of specifics, the trainers on Kamino were likely there for the money. I doubt they had altruistic ideas about training the clones who would save the Galaxy, as there_ was _no large scale war at the time, no obvious great evil threatening everyone. And while a portion of the trainers sympathized with the clones on some level, and may have felt affection for them, at the end of the day, I imagine they all knew they were there to train a slave army of young people who would have no choice but to fight and die._

_This is one reason why I don’t think the trainers, even if many of them were Mandalorian, would have taught the clones much about their culture. The clones were never recognized as Mandalorian, so why bother to impart the values and language of your culture to those who can never be a part of it? When they can never go on to bring glory to the Mandalorian people, or further their interests in the Galaxy?_

_On top of all that, while Jango did step in a few times on behalf of the cadets, like when Dred Priest set up fighting rings, he seems to have thought of the clones as little more than biological droids, so it’s not like he would have encouraged the trainers to treat them as people, let alone Mandalorians. And from what I understand, in Legends, he included a modified version of_ Vode An _in the clones' flash training, but that just seems incongruous with  how the clones were raised in every other way, so I've decided not to use it.  
_

_However, I do headcanon that the Alphas and CCs would have picked up varying amounts of Mando’a and Mandalorian culture just from spending more time with the trainers, in smaller groups._

_2\. I highly doubt the Kaminoans would have approved of the clones being taught Mando’a. That would allow for cadets to communicate with each other right under the Kaminoans’ noses, and considering how every facet of the clones’ young lives was so strictly controlled, I can’t see the Kaminoans overlooking it. Additionally, having a language and heritage passed down to them would have given the clones something that they could possess, that the Kaminoans couldn’t control or take away from them. As far as I know, they weren’t even allowed names until Shaak showed up, so why would they be allowed a culture?_

_3\. Again, while I adore all kinds of stories where the clones identify as Mandalorian on various levels, I really love the idea of them creating their own culture. Not something handed down to them half-heartedly, but something unique to them, that_ they _made, and_ they _own. Imagine millions of young people, raised together in harsh conditions, having to rely solely on each other for comfort and humanity, sent off to die for a Galaxy that (aside from the Jedi) didn’t care about them beyond how much they cost to produce. They likely had little exposure to other cultures during their time on Kamino, so imagine what they could create! It’s like building a culture from scratch in less than ten years. And after Geonosis, you have the constant backdrop of the war, and the camaraderie amongst the GAR units, their friendships with the Jedi, and contact with hundreds of different cultures on various planets. The possibilities are endless!_

So that’s why I’ve chosen not to include a lot of Mando’a in the RCAU—at least, not much more than any other language the clones might pick up.

+++

This tangentially relates to the word ‘vod’, but it’s something I’ve thought about a lot in regards to the clones’ vocabulary and how it affects their culture. For one thing, they wouldn’t have had access to information that wasn’t essential to their training on Kamino. So they would never have read novels, or poetry, or heard much music that wasn’t a training aid, or learned about history outside of its relevance to combat (though the CCs likely got more in-depth training about the politics and strategies around war, I still think they didn’t know much beyond that). I also headcanon that they didn’t have access to information on sexuality and gender identity. After all, why would they need to know about that to be effective weapons?

Which is why, even though there are definitely clones who sit all along the gender identity and sexuality spectrums, I don’t think they would necessarily have the words to describe that. They’re conditioned to believe that they’re identical, replaceable tools, but even if they parrot that garbage sometimes, they _know_ that they’re not all the same. They can clearly detect differences in voice, personality, speech patterns, posture, likes and dislikes, more or less skill than the average clone in various areas, etc. But aside from some Jedi, non-clones don’t generally notice these variations, so I think it makes sense for the clones to assume that _all_ differences among them are minor compared to those among nat-borns.

Now we come to gender identity and sexuality. Just like with other variations, it would be natural for them to view these areas of diversity as no more notable than preferences for different ration flavors.

They certainly know the words ‘sister’ and ‘sibling,’ but again, they see themselves as so homogeneous in the eyes of others, that they must all fit under one word—brother—which, for the clones, doesn’t necessarily mean ‘male/man.’

Of course, later in the war, when they’ve had exposure to the Jedi, and other cultures, and more access to information on the holonet, I think some of them might start to either develop or adopt vocabulary to describe diversity among them. But I also think the sense of solidarity in their collectivist culture, as well as the risks associated with standing out too much during their upbringing, might make them hesitant to label anyone beyond their CC, CT, etc designations and positions in the GAR.

Anyway, that’s my long-winded explanation of why ‘vod’ won’t appear much in the RCAU, even though I love it. T^T


	2. Attempting to Make Sense of the Clones’ Designation Numbers or: How to Lose Your Mind in Five Easy Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A relatively logical system I came up with for how clones's designations work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically just a copy/paste of a Tumblr post I made a few months ago, so the tone is a little more informal.

Anyone who knows me also knows that, when I come across a problem that both interests me and doesn’t make sense ([ like how the GAR is organized ](https://cacodaemonia.tumblr.com/post/628899930573045760/star-wars-the-clone-wars-republic-military)), I will obsess over it until I’ve come up with something that’s at least somewhat logical.

Enter the _“CT/CC/ARC/etc.+numbers”_ designations for the clones.

I know the clones’ designations have no true logic to them, and that the various people involved in naming them obviously had no system to follow. And my idea isn’t bulletproof, as you’ll see, but I needed _something_ for my sanity!

At first I tried to come up with a way for the numbers to indicate something like dates in ATC (After Treaty of Coruscant) plus birth order, but that doesn't work at all. Then, because I’ve adopted three ex-racing greyhounds over the years, I started thinking about the system used for their [ right ear tattoos ](https://www.greysave.org/your-greyhounds-racing-history.html), but discarded it. I even considered that Kaminoans only have 6 fingers so maybe they'd have a base-6 number system, but that didn’t help me either.

Then I realized that clones are just products to the Kaminoans. So, **SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) numbers** , which are used in real world businesses to track inventory, would make sense.

Most clones’ designations start with letters like CT/CC/ARC/etc, then a hyphen, then four numbers. But there are plenty that don’t follow that formula, like CT-782 (Hevy), CT-0000/1010 (the 501st’s Fox), or CT-27-5555 (Fives before he got his ARC designation, ARC-5555), so it's frustratingly inconsistent. Here’s a rundown of the possible explanations I’ve come up with for the myriad inconsistencies: 

1\. First, suppose that most clones' SKU format is [letters, hyphen, four digits, hyphen, four more digits]. Obviously the Kaminoans would be very particular about how the designations are formatted, but perhaps the clones themselves sometimes use slashes and hyphens interchangeably? That means that CT-0000/1010 could also be written CT-0000-1010. But then you have Jai'galaar, or CT-55/11-9009, whose designation gives me a headache. It’s _possible_ the designations could be formatted as CT-xx(slash or hyphen)xx(slash or hyphen)xxxx? This is the part of my theory that bugs me the most.

2\. Next, it makes sense that the clones tend to drop the first four digits because eights numbers is a ridiculous mouthful. It’s also possible that they often drop zeros from the beginnings of both number sequences. So CT-27-5555 would be CT-0027-5555, CT-782 would be CT-xxxx-0782, etc.

(I’ll be the first to admit that these first two ideas are the weakest. I honestly don’t recall which characters recite the various designations. If it’s a clone or even one of the trainers using the abbreviated designations, the ideas work well enough, but if a Kaminoan refers to one of the clones in such a way, that would potentially poke holes in the theory.)

But, moving on! How are the “inventory” numbers determined, you ask?

3\. What if the first two digits are related to whatever DNA modification set the clone belongs to? We know of at least a few discrete configurations, such as those used for the Null-class ARCs and later the Alpha-class ARCs (being prototypes, their designations, like N-5 or Alpha-17, don’t fit into my scheme). I imagine the Kaminoans were always tinkering with these configurations as they discovered hot to manipulate traits they considered more or less desirable, so they probably had quite a few “DNA configs.”

4\. Then we have the next two digits. This could indicate the batch number for that DNA config. So for example you might have CT-06(the sixth DNA config)37(the 37th batch using that particular DNA config), or CT-0637-xxxx.

5\. Finally, the last four digits could indicate decanting order. So, CT-1743-9561 would be DNA config 17, 43rd batch from that config, and the 9,561st clone decanted from that batch.

You might be wondering if the numbers work. The Kaminoans wouldn’t want there to be two clones running around with the exact same designation, so does this system accommodate the number of clones they created for the war?

As far as I can tell, it does (bear in mind I’m very bad at math so please correct me if this is wrong!). If you assume that there could be up to 100 (00-99) DNA configs, and up to 100 (00-99) batches from each config, that comes to 10,000 possible combinations. But when you add on the last four digits (0000-9999), which allow for up to 10,000 clones in each batch, you get a final total of 100,000,000 for CTs alone. Let’s say we logically assume that the Kaminoans didn’t come up with 100 different DNA configs - perhaps they’d created 31 by the end of the war - that still gives us a potential total of 31,000,000 combinations. I also think it’s very likely that the first batches after the Nulls and Alphas, which were probably still considered prototypes, didn’t utilize the full 0000-9999 of the last four digits. Even considering that, there’s still a ton of wiggle room between how these numbers work out and even the highest estimates I’ve seen for how many clones were created on Kamino.

There is an extreme outlier from Legends: CT-282-SD00001-983725138, but I'm not even touching that insanity (*insert “I pretend I do not see it” meme*).

And of course we have Echo. To quote [ his Clone Wars wiki entry ](https://clonewars.fandom.com/wiki/Echo) (emphasis mine):

_Echo's designation changed several times over the course of The Clone Wars. It was originally listed as_ **_CT-26-1409_ ** _in the reference book, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Visual Guide Ultimate Battles. But the episode "Clone Cadets" showed the number_ **_CT-21-0408_ ** _on Echo's armor, which was reflected on StarWars.com, The Clone Wars Character Encyclopedia, and in the more recent reference work, Ultimate Star Wars. When Echo returned in "The Bad Batch", he was identified as_ **_CT-1409_ ** _, partially retaining the original number. Since "The Bad Batch" and Ultimate Star Wars are both considered Canon, this article will assume that both are correct._

*rips hair out* Echo, my son, my dear snarky child, why must you do this to me???

Was he mixed up with another clone when they were little and the Kaminoans didn’t realize it until later?? Are some clones assigned different numbers after they’re deployed?? And why wasn’t he referred to as ARC-xxxx in season 7, since both he and Fives became ARCs??

Well.

[Crystalshard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalshard/pseuds/Crystalshard)'s theory, which I love and is now my headcanon, is that “Echo was the subject of a stocktaking error in which a very tired Kaminoan scientist tagged Echo’s arm chip incorrectly, and it took Rex forever to fix the admin error. Never assume malice when incompetence is a more likely answer.” I keep imagining poor Rex being very confused when he notices the discrepancy. Then for months, he and Appo spend what little free time they have sifting through files, comming COs in other battalions, and listening to the mind-numbing Kamino cloning facility’s hold music for hours while trying to sort this out.

That’s what I’ve got. If anyone has suggestions for how to improve this so that it makes more sense I would LOVE to hear them!


End file.
